I’d say this is a mischaracterization of things, at least at this point in the other thread. The other idea more or less amounts to Rey Chosen One.
I agree, that was inexact language on my part.
All that being said, the idea we have on the other thread can never be Rey Nobody in essence, because Rey, despite being made by nobody (the Force itself) and raised as a nobody by nobodies, is still somebody of extreme importance in the grand scheme of things. But I think removing the direct lineage to Palpatine makes things more palatable, and for those who preferred a direct link to him for whatever reason, they can still imagine that Palpatine did maybe have a hand in how the Force designed them, despite the conclusion of everything pointing to the contrary (ya know, the part where Palpatine finally admits she’s nothing but a scavenger girl).
This is why I think that your idea, despite how well it works in many ways, is ultimately incompatible with ‘Rey Nobody’, since in that version she is basically another Anakin, the most important person in the galaxy. The story would be a retread of the ‘Chosen One’ angle that we’ve already gotten.
The great thing about TLJ’s reveal about Rey was that we finally had the fate of the galaxy potentially being decided by someone who wasn’t the literal chosen one or the son of the chosen one. Rey may have been strong with the Force, may have even been a powerful Jedi if she were born in the Old Republic, but here she is one of maybe hundreds of thousands in the galaxy who have the Force but have never had the opportunity to develop their ability. Rey has become emblematic of the state of the galaxy in TLJ, and that’s a remarkable and refreshing development, which I think is why it’s worth saving.
Any further issues with her power level aren’t too concerning to me, since in Starlight it’s now established that her quick rise to power was fueled by the Dark Side, and she’s clearly pulling on both sides of the Force throughout the trilogy to allow her to achieve feats long before they would be able to happen if she were on only the Jedi path. And in the final confrontation, she’s only reflecting Palpatine’s power back onto himself, and even then she dies because of it, so she doesn’t need to match him in power to defeat him.
It’s just that I get hung up on this plot beat specifically, what’s supposed to come across. Is the idea that if D-O never went to Jakku, then Ochi never went to Jakku? Just feels like a slight stretch, imo, unless you have en earlier line of D-O saying “I went everywhere master went.”
Yeah, I’m not happy with this scene either.
I agree with what everyone else is saying about your latest idea, Nev. The whole “dark side or death” conflict is a stroke of genius, but the rewritten Ochi exposition is more confusing than anything (mainly because it feels like a complete non-sequitur to D-O having “a ton of information about Exegol”). Maybe we could just cut out the “D-O has the information they need” plot point entirely, and imply that the info about the nav tower came from Hux’s message at the beginning of the movie? It would remove one additional twist from this needlessly convoluted plot, at least.
Either way, I think if we’re gonna go with the whole “Rey Palpatine is a lie” idea, the revelation that it’s a lie should be delivered by Palpatine himself, in a classically villainous “I lied!” fashion. The final anime beam clash does seem like a pretty nice place to put it: it’s the resolution of the plot stakes, so it should ideally be the resolution of the emotional stakes as well.
I’d like to cut as little from the film as possible, but I agree that maybe it would be smoother if we cut the bit with Finn bringing up Ochi’s mission, since it’s not something that Poe even needs to hear. Presumably the point of the scene is that D-O has information about Exegol, and that’s why Finn is in a rush to tell Poe about it.
So maybe we can do a bit of scene shuffling to make it work. So after Ben’s redemption, we have the Pryde scene:
“The final order begins…she will come, her friends will follow.”
Then we cut to Rey on the island, since that scene is a good segue into Rey and her choice.
After the island scene, maybe we can cut to Poe and Lando. It may be a bit strange to cut right from the triumphant X-wing from the water right to Leia’s shrouded body, but we’ve already seen her and at least it’s going from one Leia-focused scene to another.
From there we go to Finn and D-O’s scene like we already have, then cut after Finn says ‘This droid has a ton of information about Exegol’.
Cut to C-3PO and R2-D2’s reunion, since it continues the droid focus, and then after ‘picking up a signal…from where?’, we get the D-O plugged in scene. Since we’re cutting Finn knowing about the Rey Palpatine lie, we can keep this scene as it was in the theatrical version.
The only change that we would need to make now is the added Palpatine dialogue to make it clear that his story was always a lie. Because now Ochi’s mission is unconfirmed, the audience is free to recognize that Rey’s vision of his ship in TFA was different than in TROS and confirm for themselves that the story was a lie.
…
And I think that’s…it? Like, it’s kind of crazy how little this idea needs to change the original film, apart from the Kylo quarters dialogue. In fact, the entire hangar scene could be the theatrical version if necessary, though I would prefer to avoid the Dyad reference because it would be a third named reveal in just a few minutes, which I think is too much. But yeah. Kind of crazy how feasible this may be for how much value it could provide.